Indecent Suggestion - By Elizabeth Bevarly Page 0,88
insistently, so insistently that he had no choice but to raise his arms over his head so that she could strip the garment off of him completely. She then hooked her thumbs into the waistband of his boxers. But she paused before jerking those down.
She met his gaze intently. “Have either of us used that word that was causing me to behave like a shameless hussy around you?” she asked him.
He shook his head, but said nothing.
“And yet, here I am, behaving like a shameless hussy around you,” she told him.
This time he nodded, but he still said nothing.
“Why would I do that, do you think?” she asked.
He shrugged, then said, “Have you been under a lot of stress and pressure lately?”
This time Becca was the one to shake her head.
“Been working on any racy lingerie accounts?”
“No more than usual,” she told him.
He looked thoughtful for a moment. “And I know you haven’t gone too long without sex.”
Well, that was debatable, she thought. It had been hours since the two of them were last together.
“Then I’m stumped,” he said.
She looked down at the documentation between his legs. “Oh, I don’t know about that….”
“I mean I’m out of ideas,” he said, his documentation growing larger at her compliment. “I don’t know why you’re behaving this way,” he added.
Becca smiled and looked at his face again. “I do,” she said. “It’s because you turn me on. And it’s because I love you. And it’s because I want to spend the rest of my life loving you and being turned on by you.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Come again?”
She expelled an exasperated sound. “I’m trying to.”
“No, I mean… How can you know that?” he asked. “Dorcas hypnotized you and—”
“She did,” Becca agreed. “This morning, in fact. And she took away the posthypnotic suggestion about that word, which I don’t want to say, because I don’t want you to think I’m responding to that, when what I’m really responding to is you, and when what I’ve been responding to all along is you.”
Before he could ask more about that, Becca told him about her exchange with Dorcas, and how the hypnotherapist had told her it was impossible for anyone to be hypnotized into doing something they didn’t want to do in the first place. And with every new word she spoke, Turner’s expression changed, going from wary to cautious to hopeful to ecstatic to totally and completely aroused. And then to something else, something Becca recognized, because she felt it, too: love.
“Dorcas took the suggestion away?” he echoed when she was finished talking.
“Yup.”
“You’re not responding to…that word…right now?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“You’re responding to me?”
“Yah-huh.”
“You’ve always been responding to me?”
“Yepper.” Becca pressed a quick kiss to his mouth, then added, “And I’m responding to my love for you, too.”
She started to tug down his boxers, but he pulled away from her, saying, “Hold that thought.”
His retreat caught her off guard, but the next thing she knew he was disappearing into his bedroom. “But it’s not the thought I want to hold!” she called after him.
With a sigh of frustration, she followed him, halting in the bedroom doorway when she saw him turn away from the closet holding a little red bag that she recognized from a downtown jeweler.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He withdrew a little red box from the little red bag and opened it, then crossed the room to show it to Becca. Nestled in a crush of red velvet was the most beautiful diamond ring she’d ever seen in her life. She gasped with delight when she realized what it meant.
“I bought it just before running into Dorcas,” he said. “That’s why I went downtown Saturday. I wanted to give it to you Saturday night. But then—” He halted, because they both knew what had happened to prevent him from going through with the plan. “You like?” he asked.
She shook her head, happiness welling inside her to near overflowing. “I love,” she told him.
His relief was almost palpable. “Then you’ll wear it?” he asked.
“Only if it means what it traditionally means to wear a ring like that,” she told him.
He smiled. “It means that sixty years from now, you’ll still be putting on stuff like that and we’ll still be smoking up the sheets together. Only we’ll be doing it as randy old married people instead of randy young single people.” He thought for a moment before adding, “And when we come home from work at night, it won’t be Englund Advertising. It’ll be Mercer-McCloud Advertising.